Hop aboard for an eclectic journey

He's a trained opera singer who developed his style and vision while traveling the United States and Europe as a musical vagabond.

"It's just about showing up for work and doing the work," said Stern, the leader of Portland, Ore.-based Vagabond Opera, which is running like clockwork on its 14-city West Coast tour. "Let that guide you more than anything. In terms of specifically right now, we're enjoying this so much we're not really thinking about anything else.

"So far, people like it. Someone said it's the best show he's ever seen us do. People say they liked it as much - if not more - than what we usually do."

That would be an eclectic brand of world music - from Eastern European to klezmer, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-style operetta, American folk, Middle Eastern, jazz-a-la-Parisienne, rock, cabaret and burlesque - played on acoustic and wind/brass instruments.

Add some belly-dancers, seven languages - from Polish to Yiddish - and, for the first time, "an actual play, loosely-knit with plenty of room for improvisation and chances to go off-the-cuff," Stern said. "An excuse to expand the show," and it results in "The Pocket Watch," a two-hour production Vagabond Opera performs Sunday at the Sutter Creek Theatre.

Stern, who plays accordion, piano, sings, composes, actually owns an antique pocket watch of unknown provenance. He and co-creator/director Rosen have concocted a concert-stage play he only reluctantly attempted to describe during a Tuesday telephone conversation from Berkeley.

It certainly helped that Rosen trained at Dell'Arte International School of Theatre in Blue Lake (Humboldt County), learning "clown movement, the whole Marcel Marceau thing," Stern said. "She's very creative and as much prompted the idea to do this as I did."

It's a concept Stern frequently has pondered for his 10-year-old group and its revolving roster of musicians.

"I've always wanted to do a show that would take people on a certain kind of journey," said Stern, 42. "It came out of a sort of improvisation based on our regular rehearsal. "We both sure threw a lot of ideas up against the wall. We'd go crazy working from a script. This is more like a big circle. It's about a stolen pocket watch and how that contains the secret to a person's voice.

Stern discovered that for himself as a child.

Stern, an "operatic" tenor, "always studied and always was hoping" to pursue a music career. At 17, he joined Philadelphia's Delaware Valley Opera Company, where he gained his musical education.

"It opened up a whole new world," Stern said. "I didn't really know that much about opera. Then, to suddenly have all of that - Giacomo Puccini, (Giuseppi) Verdi - to work with.

He also absorbed "whatever was on the radio. I really like listening to many, many kinds of music, though I wouldn't say all."

Instead of a college conservatory, Stern mastered in vagabonding.

He headed to Europe, writing, perfoming and spending most of his time in Paris. He gathered a broadening range of musical styles.

"Pure kismet" led him to Albuquerque, N.M., but not what was necessary - "there wasn't enough art and music coming through" - to fulfill a career destiny.

So, he and his then-girlfriend, a modern dancer, gassed up their Oldsmobile and, quite literally, drove around the country. Stern sang and played accordion, "busking" on street corners nationwide.

Twelve years ago, he settled in Portland. Why? "I ran out of gas."

Stern said Portland - with its spirit of experimentalism in arts and music - "just felt right then and kinda has continued to feel right."

Though it would seem Vagabond Opera - "vagabloggery" is its social-media synonym - could be an ideal fit for Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's satirically hip "Portlandia" TV show, Stern has a ready, well-rehearsed reply to frequently asked questions about such a prospect:

"I can reflect on it simply: 'I've never seen the show. It's now very easy for people to have an idea that gives the city a meme. I don't know if it's accurate. I don't know if I'd want to be involved."